World briefs

UK jobless claims unexpectedly fell in November and a wider measure of unemployment dropped the most in 11 years, underlining the resilience of the labour market in the face of a weak recovery. Unemployment benefit claims declined to 1.58 million, the Office for National Statistics said. Bloomberg

PSA Peugeot Citroen, Europe’s second-largest car maker, will eliminate 1500 jobs by 2014, deepening its workforce reduction as car sales in the region plunged to a 17-year low. The cuts, on top of 8000 announced in July, will be made by not replacing people who leave. Bloomberg

HSBC Holdings’ Mexican branches had become so well known to drug traffickers as the place to launder proceeds from illicit sales that cartels used special boxes to speed transactions, US prosecutors said. Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel and Colombia’s Norte del Valle cartel moved more than $US881 million through HSBC’s US unit from 2006 to 2010. Bloomberg

The leaders of Russia’s lower house of Parliament who have been working on a bill retaliating for the US’s Magnitsky Act, said they would name the bill after an adopted Russian baby who died in an overheated car in Virginia in 2008. Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer and whistleblower who died in detention in Moscow. The US act puts visa and financial sanctions on those deemed to be connected with his case. Bloomberg

The Indonesian government set up a taskforce to deal with possible sanctions from FIFA following its failure to merge two rival football associations. Acting Youth and Sports Minister Agung Laksono said that the five-member team will consult with the world governing body, which had set a December 10 deadline for settling the disputes. AP

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman criticised Europe, saying its treatment of Israel was comparable to Holocaust policies. Mr Lieberman said Europe had ignored a speech by Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal, in which he said Palestinians would not “cede an inch" of historic Palestine, which covers modern Israel. AP

Russian President
Vladimir Putin
has been criticised by activists after he compared Lenin’s embalmed corpse to the holy relics of Christian saints. In a speech before a group of supporters, Mr Putin spoke against the idea of removing Lenin’s mausoleum from Red Square in Moscow. AP